It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Wednesday, August 13th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - Brought to you by the Converse County Tourism Promotion Board! Discover Douglas and Glenrock in beautiful Wyoming, where rich history, outdoor adventure, and welcoming communities await. Feel the Energy of Converse County at www.ConverseCountyTourism.com.
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As a handful of Wyoming Republicans with name recognition across the state play wait-and-see with U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman and the 2026 race for governor, a longtime state legislator isn’t waiting any longer.
State Sen. Eric Barlow of Gillette officially announced Tuesday he’ll be on the 2026 Republican primary ballot for governor.
Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports that he made the announcement at the Wright Centennial Museum in Campbell County, not far from the generational ranch where he grew up and still raises cattle.
“He's a former house speaker, so people know him from that, and he's a Republican, a former US Marine, but in his last campaign, he was accused by his his opponent as not being conservative enough… he said he doesn't like those labels and the measuring of how conservative or how liberal someone is. He says what really matters… is if you're making a difference, if you're getting things done.”
Read the full story HERE.
But even the opening prayer at Barlow’s announcement for governor cautioned it could be an ugly campaign. However, Barlow said if it gets ugly, it's not going to come from him.
“In the opening prayer, the pastor prayed for Barlow and his family to be able to withstand any of the misinformation, the mudslinging campaigns that can come with politics. So that was kind of kind of set up a little bit, and I think it's kind of in the back of people's mind, what kind of a campaign is this going to be? We have a year to find out.”
The state’s primary elections are scheduled to be held on August 18, 2026.
Read the full story HERE.
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In a 4-2 vote Tuesday, a division of Wyoming’s environmental quality agency granted the request of solar power company Enbridge to increase one of its Laramie County projects’ battery storage by 50%.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the approval came despite an emotional objection by a fourth-generation rancher living next door, who said the land will never be the same.
“The Cowboy solar project … it’s a huge solar farm going in near Cheyenne, they asked for an upgrade in battery storage. They were going to upgrade from 133 megawatts to like 200, and so they presented before the Industrial Siting panel on Tuesday in a public meeting in Cheyenne, like, we know this upgrade, it's not going to impact traffic or the environment, really, it's not going to increase the footprint of the project. But a local rancher who lives near that site said it does increase the risk of fire, and my place would be the first to go.”
Though Enbridge didn’t name the large-scale consumer necessitating the upgrade, others at the meeting said it’s a data center looking to settle in the area.
Read the full story HERE.
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Six days after a media company shut down eight legacy Wyoming newspapers with no notice, a group of local buyers emerged to take over operations, keep all employees and resume publishing immediately.
The owners of the Buffalo Bulletin, Robb and Jen Hicks, along with the former publisher of the eight newspapers under their former owner, News Media Corp., announced Tuesday that they have acquired the papers from the Illinois-based media company. Cowboy State Daily’s Justin George reports that the sale required that all employees be re-hired - and paid.
“Buffalo bulletin owners, Robb and Jen Hicks, along with the former publisher of those papers, Rob Mortimore, who was working for the company that shuttered the papers, have all said that they acquired these papers and are planning to resume publication immediately and have rehired all the workers at those papers who had been laid off just suddenly on last Wednesday. So this is great news for a lot of Wyoming's communities and a lot of Wyoming's counties. These are small papers, but they were papers that had been around for a long time with, sort of the papers of records in their community.”
Mortimore will continue to be the group publisher of the eight newspapers, adding that the outpouring of support from the local towns and cities served by them has been, quote, "overwhelming and humbling."
Read the full story HERE.
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The pieces might be falling into place for Wyoming’s timber industry to make a strong comeback.
That’s what legislators and land management officials said on Tuesday at a meeting of theWyoming Legislature’s Select Federal Natural Resources Committee. They cited the volume of timber being cut in Wyoming, which Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports might outpace the state’s few remaining sawmills to meet the demand.
“It really looks as if Wyoming's timber industry is on the cusp of a renaissance. It used to be a much bigger industry and then kind of really contracted down to just a few companies… they had officials there from the state forestry division, the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, and everybody across the board seemed to say that current policy coming out of Washington is really encouraging a lot more cutting, a lot more direct management of the forest, not only To extract timber products, but also to mitigate the risk of wildfires.”
The increase in demand coincides with tariffs being placed on Canadian lumber, which for decades had been a main source of wood in the United States.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming’s all-Republican congressional delegation on Tuesday voiced its support for President Donald Trump’s decision to mobilize federal troops in Washington D.C.
Trump on Monday announced he would deploy the National Guard on the ground in the nation’s capital and seize control of its police force to push back against what he said was a surge in criminal activity. Cowboy State Daily’s Jackson Walker reports that each member of Wyoming’s delegation said that they support Trump’s decision, adding that crime has become a major problem in Washington.
“Each one of them is largely toeing the party line. They are all in favor of President Donald Trump's move to bring in National Guard troops to Washington, DC. Now they largely capitalize on the issue of crime in Washington DC, which has also been something the President has spoke a lot about, saying that this is a necessary measure in order to ensure that Wyomingites who visit Washington DC are safe.”
Critics of Trump’s decision argue, however, that Washington, D.C., crime had been declining before he decided to intervene. The Department of Justice in January announced that violent crime in D.C. had reached a 30-year low.
Read the full story HERE.
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A crowd packed the Thermopolis fire hall Monday night for what’s been a hot topic — the future of Hot Springs State Park — with the one guy who now knows the most about it.
Mark Begich, a former U.S. senator for Alaska, is the owner of Wyoming Hot Springs LLC, the company that the state has chosen to operate all of the park’s amenities, including Star Plunge, the park’s popular hot-springs fed complex of indoor and outdoor pools. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that opinions during Monday night’s meeting ranged from hot to hopeful.
“So Mark Begich, the US senator from Alaska decided to come to Wyoming to have a meet and greet with Thermopolis residents to talk about his plans, to answer questions. It's been a hot topic for a while now in Thermopolis, and you know, people range from they’re angry to they’re hopeful and everything kind of in between… He answered a lot of questions, he corrected a lot of misinformation… he knows that he needs a pricing structure that works for locals as well as his business… it was great to get to talk to him a little bit and get his thoughts about what he plans and what he foresees in the future.”
Begich’s specific plans for the park depend on the outcome of a lawsuit between the state and the owner of the Star Plunge. The two sides have been embroiled in a legal conflict over several thorny contractual issues.
Read the full story HERE.
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A proposed change to the Wyoming Constitution - to make state Supreme Court nominees clear a state Senate confirmation - died Tuesday, after numerous attorneys brought fierce debate to the legislative Judiciary Committee.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that Wyoming lawmakers started contemplating changing the state’s largely non-transparent judicial selection process after multiple high-profile cases raised concerns in the public.
“It got a little wild during the committee, to be honest, because just this swarm of attorneys and retired Wyoming Supreme Court justices were like, no, don't mess with this system. We work with lawyers from other states who are like, Oh, elections are so bad, or Senate confirmation politicizes the courts. And so as this happened, at least one of the attorneys, Alaina Stedillie, got into a fiery back and forth with multiple legislators, where she was saying, this is going to turn the Senate confirmation hearings into a political circus.”
Detractors of that idea say it will deter good candidates from applying to be justices, because they won’t want to announce to the people who depend on them for case continuity that they’re willing to leave. Proponents of the idea say it will give the public more insight into the way their potential judges operate and the way the system works.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Sheridan couple was baffled and creeped out by trail camera photos showing a masked bandit pilfering their campsite in the Bighorn Mountains over a four-hour period early Thursday.
Tammy Cote told outdoors reporter Mark Heinz that though no high-value items were taken, it was “weird” to know that somebody had been creeping around their campsite while they were away.
“Folks sometimes, they'll set up campsites, and they'll leave their camper and various things up there, and also, as these folks did, set up trail cameras to maybe catch photos of wildlife. So they caught photos of a dude wearing a ski mask and gloves and a headlamp, creeping in and out of their campsite several times between 1am and 5am on Thursday… She said there's no evidence that at any point, he tried to break into the camper. He did break into a toolbox on their ATV and took a few things out of it.”
Cote said she has no idea what the intruder’s ultimate motive was, or why he kept wandering in and out of camp for so long. She said the incident gave the camp, quote, “a different feel” when they returned, and added that they decided to move their camp to another location.
Read the full story HERE.
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And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for tuning in - I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
